Under freedom of information, The Burkean can reveal a marked fourteen-fold increase in free legal aid costs billed to the taxpayer since 2015. From figures obtained from the Legal Aid Board, the body charged with handling free legal aid for asylum applications, the amount of money spent handling asylum claims increased fourteen fold from €87,259 in 2015 to €1,243,907 in 2020.
With the number of asylum claims referred to the Board remaining relatively constant the average cost of an asylum application processed by the Legal Aid Board increased from €56 per application in 2015 to €1058 in 2020.
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
| Cost | €87,259 | €75,356 | €552,787 | €1,050,035 | €1,582,789 | €1,243,907 |
| International Protection Applications | 1,537 | 1,658 | 1,489 | 2,079 | 2,571 | 1,174 |
In response to our inquiries, a spokesman from the Legal Aid Board described a 2017 change of procedure of referring private lawyers to asylum applicants from the outset of their claim as being the driving factor behind the rise in cost. Prior to this applicants generally received legal assistance for the appeal stage of their application upon refusal.
A statutory body, the Legal Aid Board employs 450 staff in total with 3 centres offering services pertaining to international protection. While the above figures give a general approximation as to the cost of legal aid to the taxpayer the figures do not include some salary and clerical costs.
The services on offer from the Board include assistance in any written submissions made for the sake of the application, as well as providing representation for any appeals should the application be rejected by the International Protection Office. For applicants with savings of less than €4,000 there is a contributory fee of €10, but otherwise the service is free.
Separate to free legal aid costs, The Burkean earlier this week delved into the cumulative costs of the asylum appeals process, with €268,247 being spent on outsourced legal fees for the appeals board for international protection applicants.
Warts and all the Board provides a very noble role in a very ignoble profession, providing legal representation to those in veritable need. However similar to persistent abuses within the system and considering the endemic asylum fraud within the entire process one wonders if it merely is just another barrier frustrating the system. To some €1.2 million a year may seem to be a relatively paltry sum in an era when billions are dolled out to fuel covid mania, however it goes a long way to hindering an already over-encumbered asylum system. It is long overdue for a streamlining if not complete cessation of a perennially risible asylum apparatus, and the less lawyers the better.
Ireland accepts EU quotas for thousands of asylum seekers (with no ancestral link to Ireland) to be housed and fed, thats on top of the ones crossing multiple states to seek asylum in Ireland making the dublin regulation look pointless. No problem for the EU servants in power bankrupting the state year after year to accept ludicrous quotas costing millions upon millions year after year, and paying large legal fees for non-citizens of the state, which only encourages more mass-immigration costing more and more.
Meanwhile, Irish families and Irish men and women are waiting decades to get a house and can barely afford to feed themselves or buy presents for their loved ones. Some are rotting and crying on some doorway right now and suffering. Some have already died in the rain and cold. It is disgusting, no irish man or woman should allow that to happen to their own ancestral kin.
These are completely wreckless policies and shows a complete lack of respect for irish citizens whose familes are rooted in ireland since ancient times, as clearly seen in the surnames.
Hungary, Slovakia and Poland have opposed any mandatory or permanent quotas to bring in asylum seekers. Now the EU are trying to isolate and punish them. Any hint of strong nationalism gets immediately punished by the demonic EU. This shows that every state that is a member of the EU have lost their sovereignty from a technical and spiritual perspective.
Those eastern countries have seen how dangerous western nations have become since allowing mass-immigration to flourish. The writing is on the wall that the EU is nothing but a globalist project that seeks to remove nations sovereignty and enslave its citizens. To now move freely across the member states you have to either (a) take a dangerous injection like a lab-rat or (b) Get poked up the nose or poked on the tongue with a stick taking your DNA for fuck knows what.
The whole thing now around digital passports gives off a horrifying dystopian agenda vibe, which is not surprising because the whole EU project seems to have been spawned out of a demons anus.
No national party with even an ounce of common sense could possibly say that the EU is healthy for a so-called sovereign state.
The brits had enough, the irish should have enough too by this stage.
European countries can cooperate with each other without a deplorable central governing body.
Again, none of this in the “mainstream” media. Well done theburkean.